So "screen time" leads to less

conversation with your one to three year old? Who would have thought that? Really? Someone has done some "research"?

The article in the paper this morning has left me - bewildered? I would have thought it was obvious that young children, the one to three year olds in this study, were not interacting as much with an adult if they are looking at a screen. If they are not interacting then they will not vocalise as much. They will also hear fewer adult words and engage in less conversation. 

"Oh, he doesn't say much yet," is something I have heard sometimes. I have sometimes wondered about that. I have actually wondered, "Is this the result of being put in front of the electronic "babysitter"?  I have also wondered if it is something to do with being delivered to "day care", "child-minding", "preschool" or some other form of out of home care. Yes, some of that can be good, even very good. It can develop language in other ways. It can provide the vocabulary a child needs in order to begin school - but is it providing the one-on-one conversation a child once got at home when talking to an adult? I doubt it. How could that be provided in the same way? Surely it is something that teaches a child far more than the uniform vocabulary being taught in his or her other place of learning?

Children do not learn language in the way they once did. That's surely obvious? When children went to work instead of school they were surrounded by adult language and interacted with adults. It would be interesting to look at the differences in vocabulary use  between groups of children who live in places where the "employment" of children is still high and their counterparts who attend school.  I might be wrong but I suspect the "employed" children would use more words used by adults...simply because those are the words they would hear.

There are all sorts of claims made for having children in out-of-home care, including claims made about language development, but I do wonder how often this current generation of young children play with words the way we did. Why were the children I know so delighted when the Senior Cat recited nonsense rhymes to them? He was always shocked to realise they were not engaging in that sort of vital conversation. Yes, it is vital. Screen time cannot teach you to play with words the way we did.